Adele 3/12/2011- I think the BookBuilder site (http://bookbuilder.cast.org/) is a great tool for teachers and students to create books with ease. Even I found the bookbuilding to be a fairly simple process. BookBuilder has layouts for the pages and all you have to do is click to edit and type to include text and pictures can be uploaded. One snag that I ran into when creating my book, was that I couldn’t upload clip art directly from the internet into the book. I think I would have to download the clip art to my computer then it probably could be uploaded to my book, but I didn’t have time to play with that. The other snag I ran into was with the table of contents that only allows 150 characters and I wanted to include an extensive Table of Contents. Unfortunately, I had my extensive Table of Contents already typed out but didn’t find out that there was a limit until I tried to save it. Sharing the books from BookBuilder with others is also simple. As with wikis and blogs, provide the link and others can enjoy your book. I plan to use this tool to create informational books (books that teach) for students and teachers to use. I will also allow my students to create books which will give them purpose and practice with the writing process. This bookbuilder activity fits perfectly with the Universal Design Principles because it offers teachers a different method of giving learners a way to acquire knowledge, another way for learners to demonstrate their knowledge, and an additional way for learners to be engaged. Voice can be added for you ELL students or students with reading difficulties. I will test the voice feature at a later date. I am glad that we had to experiment with BookBuilder!
Adele 3/12/2011- I think the BookBuilder site (http://bookbuilder.cast.org/) is a great tool for teachers and students to create books with ease. Even I found the bookbuilding to be a fairly simple process. BookBuilder has layouts for the pages and all you have to do is click to edit and type to include text and pictures can be uploaded. One snag that I ran into when creating my book, was that I couldn’t upload clip art directly from the internet into the book. I think I would have to download the clip art to my computer then it probably could be uploaded to my book, but I didn’t have time to play with that. The other snag I ran into was with the table of contents that only allows 150 characters and I wanted to include an extensive Table of Contents. Unfortunately, I had my extensive Table of Contents already typed out but didn’t find out that there was a limit until I tried to save it. Sharing the books from BookBuilder with others is also simple. As with wikis and blogs, provide the link and others can enjoy your book.
I plan to use this tool to create informational books (books that teach) for students and teachers to use. I will also allow my students to create books which will give them purpose and practice with the writing process. This bookbuilder activity fits perfectly with the Universal Design Principles because it offers teachers a different method of giving learners a way to acquire knowledge, another way for learners to demonstrate their knowledge, and an additional way for learners to be engaged. Voice can be added for you ELL students or students with reading difficulties. I will test the voice feature at a later date. I am glad that we had to experiment with BookBuilder!